Overzealous

February 10, 1985|Sunday Call-Chronicle

To the Editor:

I would like to address Mr. Erdman's article (Jan. 13) on the deportation case of Mr. Linnas. Per available data, Mr. Linnas was not commandant of a Nazi concentrationcamp (there were no concentration camps in the German sense in Estonia), nor a member of the German Nazi organization, Self-help (Selbstschutz).

Contrary, he was a member of Estonian self-defense, and an employee of a work-camp and junior officer in one Estonian military unit. In applying for a visa to the U.S. and for citizenship, Mr. Linnas did not know that he had committed crimes in his homeland - Estonia. He believes that he exercised his duties as a soldier and employee on the territory of the Estonian Republic lawfully in accordance to the oath given to his nation.

Soviet methods of coercion need no introduction, and the fact that the witnesses against Karl Linnas were not permitted to give deposition on neutral ground and without KGB presence (thereby depriving him of his right to confront the witnesses against him) is significant. The emotional appeal of "anti-Nazi" cases represents a pretext for allowing evidence of such character into an American courtroom.

That the OSI investigators are overzealous and eagerly accept Soviet- supplied "evidence" is shown by the case of Mr. Frank Walus, who was found to be innocent - after having his life ruined by the wrongful prosecution conducted by the OSI. How shocked and hopeless must the oppressed peoples living in Eastern Europe feel when they hear that KGB-fabricated evidence is being used in America to deport anti-Communists!